Major league soccer team the Los Angeles Galaxy understood when best to court consumers to opt in to their email marketing program: at games when those consumers are decked out in Galaxy gear. But as agile as the team's stars may be, its on-site acquisition strategy wasn't at all.

North American marketers are preparing for Canada's anti-spam law, known as CASL, which could go into effect as early as the fourth quarter of this year. However, industry experts say most legitimate American marketers are ready for the law.

For years, Genzyme Corp. has operated a two-track email program to maintain contact with consumers interested in its Synvisc-One treatment for osteoarthritis of the knee. However, its email opt-in form failed to deliver, says Christine Waite, director of Synvisc-One patient marketing at Genzyme.

A permission-based email list is a beautiful thing. Some may see it as a bucketful of names to throw product and promotional information at. Others see it as cash cow, ready to be milked at every opportunity. I see it as something far more valuable.

For Freshpair, an e-commerce company that sells women's lingerie and men's underwear, building an email list is an ongoing priority. To help entice customers to add another email to their inboxes, the site is running regular contests including a "National Underwear Day" contest, which gives consumers the chance to win a free pair of underwear.

Multititle publisher Bonnier Corp. is using email marketing to build relationships with customers who are subscribing to its new iPad magazine. Subscribers who opt in to email messages while buying the digital magazine will receive an email survey with questions about themselves, and what they like and dislike about the iPad edition.

MetLife deployed a fan engagement program at the New Meadowlands Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., for New York Giants and Jets fans in an effort to make its brand more approachable and reshape the perception that life insurance companies are intimidating.

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SK&A is a leading provider of U.S. healthcare information solutions and databases. As part of IMS Health, SK&A researches and maintains contact and profiling data for over 2 million healthcare providers, including 800,000+ prescribers. SK&A's data supports research and marketing initiatives for life sciences, medical device, managed healthcare, direct marketing, publishing, education and more. SK&A's proprietary databases are telephone-verified twice per year from its world class Research Centers. SK&A enables multi-channel marketing and sets the standard for data quality and reliability. SK&A's customers include many of America's most recognized healthcare, publishing and pharmaceutical institutions.